Homeward Bound
by StrengthLove
Summary: It's Zack's first New Year's in the SOLDIER barracks in Midgard. The fun and noise of the Shinra New Year's party can't quite drown out the feeling that something is missing. When someone Zack had not expected to needs his help, Zack learns something new.


Final Fantasy 7  
  
All characters except for Rennes are property of Square.  
  
Nothing owned, nothing lost, nothing feared.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Homeward Bound  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Zack picked his way slowly across the snow covered compound, the sound of   
laughter and loud music still sitting in his ears, the smell of cigarette smoke   
rising from his clothes in the cold air. His warm breath formed plumes of   
condensation which spread and quickly dissipated into the dark winter   
morning.   
  
He stopped and craned his neck to gaze up into the sky, shifted his weight   
backwards, reeled a little and took another step back to steady himself.   
Shielding his eyes from the glare of the floodlights illuminating the   
compound with one hand, he searched for and found a patch of night between   
the golden grey clouds. He fixed his eyes on the darkness and relaxed. At the   
periphery of his vision he could make out the faint shine of a few stars. In   
Midgard, stars could only been seen in winter when humidity was low and   
the smog reduced.   
  
Zack remembered a sky filled with light and showers of meteorites in the fall   
in Gongaga. Memories of boyhood; sitting on the verandah, his father reading   
out the names of the constellations for him, Cygnus, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia,   
names as as foreign as the worlds Zack imagined illuminated by those stars.   
  
But that was then. No point in hanging onto it here. It was five a.m. in the   
morning, sub zero temperature, the first of January and he ought to be on his   
way. Zack smirked at his own reminiscing and continued on his gently   
drunken path home from the New Year's celebrations in the Shinra main   
building.   
  
  
In the muted silence and warmth of the barracks corridor, he ran into   
Sephiroth, his superior officer and commander. Zack saluted him and opened   
the front door to a gust of wind and a spray of ice crystals.  
  
"No New Year's party this year?" he asked grinning, knowing his   
commander's distaste for the New Year's party and its main protagonists. "If   
you hurry you can still catch the last bit of it. When I left, Scarlett still hadn't   
managed to persuade Heidegger to perform his annual limbo dancing, so I'd   
say they have a good two hours left." Sephiroth smirked and shook his head.  
"No thank you, Zack," he said, preparing to exit the door. "It's best to leave   
the limbo dancing to the experts, too easy to break one's back on it otherwise.   
If you'll excuse me…"  
  
"Where are you off to at this hour?" Zack asked, suddenly feeling bold.  
"Dr. Hojo's lab," Sephiroth replied. "The Mako treatment of this half year."   
Zack winced. He associated Mako with nausea and discomfort for days. He   
was glad it wasn't him.  
"New Year's Day isn't the day for that," he commented sympathetically.   
Sephiroth shrugged.   
"The sooner it can be done, the better. You know how it is, there's no way   
past it." Zack nodded and put his hands in his pockets.   
"Yes, I know," he said. Sephiroth exited without further comments. Zack   
watched the door glide shut and continued on his way to his room to sleep off   
the remnants of the night's festivities.  
  
  
The phone rang with a loud noise, rousing Zack from deep sleep. He reached   
out to pick up the receiver. Suppressing the urge to simply let it fall back onto   
the cradle, he slowly lifted it to his ear.  
"Odegard speaking," he muttered, wondering what the hell was so important   
he had to be woken at, he turned to peer at the clock to ascertain the time,   
seven a.m., on New Year's Day for it.  
"Adjutant Odegard," a hurried voice said. "Could you please come here and   
pick up your commander forthwith?"  
"Dr. Hojo…," Zack acknowledged."Did you just come home from the New   
Year's party?" he asked in order to buy himself more time to wake up.   
Ignoring the joke, Dr. Hojo continued with the obliviousness to appropriate   
communication and personal discretion of the socially inept:  
  
"I'm really too busy to get him down to you myself, Odegard, not to mention   
he is much too heavy for me to carry anywhere, or I would have done so to   
move things along. I'm beginning to think he sets the time too high so he'll   
be sick just to inconvenience me. Could you please come here and fetch him   
now, so I can continue with my work?"  
"Ok, ok, I'll be there as fast as I can," Zack mumbled into the phone,   
grimacing at the thought of having to leave the warm bed. Without further   
ado, Dr. Hojo cut the line. "And a good morning to you," Zack muttered to   
the beeping phone.  
  
  
He walked across the compound the same way he had come a few hours   
earlier. Snowflakes fell slowly through the beams of the sodium floodlights.   
The inch thick layer of snow dampened all sounds from the surrounding city.   
The sun was still hours away. A set of footprints in the process of being   
covered by the silently falling snow crossed the compound in the direction of   
the Shinra building. There were no tracks leading back towards the barracks.   
  
The thick glass doors slid aside with a hiss. Zack stepped beneath the blast of   
hot air from the heater above and into the building proper. The spacious foyer   
lay in silence, still lit low for the night and bearing traces of the New Year's   
party in the form of paper confetti and streamers on the obsidian floor.  
  
Zack passed the empty reception desk. He wished the receptionist had been   
there, then he could have smiled to her and asked if she had seen Sephiroth   
go up to Dr. Hojo. But since she wasn't there, he'd have to try and find the   
commander on his own. Scanning the large room, he caught a movement in   
the low light, his eyes were pulled towards the twin staircases in the middle   
of the foyer. On the bottom steps of the right staircase someone was sitting,   
head down, hugging his knees. It was Sephiroth.  
  
As Zack approached him, Sephiroth looked up. "Zack?" Sephiroth asked with   
a thick voice. "Didn't you go to bed after the limbo dancing?" His face   
looked puffed and was covered with a film of moisture. A rusty rivulet of   
dried blood reached from one nostril to the chin. The veins on his naked   
hands and underams bulged darkly, distended with blood. Mako poisoning.   
Zack frowned, then crouched down, put Sephiroth's arm across his neck and   
pulled him up.   
"Come on, let's go home," he said.  
  
  
He half carried and half dragged the commander back to the barracks, his   
body tense and heavy with illness. On the way he had to stop three times to   
let Sephiroth throw up on the snow.   
  
  
In Sephiroth's private quarters, Zack let the commander down on his bed.   
Sephiroth slowly undressed, Zack helped him with his boots. When Sephiroth   
stood to pull the covers aside, he nearly lost his balance. Zack quickly took   
hold of his shoulder and steadied him.  
"I'm all gone today," he apologized with a laugh.   
"Take it easy," Zack replied, disregarding the other's embarassment.   
  
Sephiroth lay down on the pillow and passively let Zack pull the covers over   
him. Remembering a comforting gesture of his mother's, Zack reached out   
and put his palm on the other's forehead.   
"Is there something I can get for you?" he asked. "Water? Painkiller?"  
"No thanks," Sephiroth muttered.  
"Ok." Zack turned, switched off the light and opened the door. The   
illumination from the corridor formed a white oblong on the floor. He looked   
back at the form in the bed.  
"I'll see to you later, if you want to," he said into the darkness, not expecting   
any answer. There was a slight pause.  
"The code for the door is 2-1-6-6-3-4," Sephiroth said.   
"Got that. Sleep well then." Zack entered the brightly lit hallway and shut the   
door quietly behind him.   
  
  
The dark morning turned into a reluctant dawn and a cold and overcast day.   
The light from the sun never managed to fully penetrate the snow saturated   
clouds, but instead graded into a protracted dusk until the sodium lights again   
was the only illumination of the compound. Little sunlight reached down to   
the barracks even in summer. Winters seemed like one long night.   
  
Zack spent the day putting as much distance between himself and the   
hangover that was lingering in his body as possible. He didn't have the   
conscience to go to sleep when he was virtually the only person left with the   
commander in the building. Instead, he nursed a coffee and a bottle of lemon   
and lime flavored soda in his room, then had a quiet breakfast in the empty   
cafeteria. He composed a letter to his parents, at eleven he browsed through   
the lockers in the locker room to see what images had been left in the metal   
doors by the recruits. One more hour saw Zack falling asleep in front of the   
tv and an inane soap opera on the third rerun in the common room.   
  
After lunch he did his laundry and phoned up Rennes.  
"Do you miss me Zack?"she asked quietly over the static of distance and   
winter weather raging in the planet's atmosphere.   
"Yes I do," he confirmed without hesitation. He patiently listened to Rennes   
and her complaints about the boredom of attending New Year's   
festivities and family dinners for half an hour, wondering what   
constellations were visible from Mideel. When the short day had   
turned to night, Zack returned to Sephiroth's quarters.   
  
  
Zack opened the door and entered the dark room, navigated by the light   
shining in from outside. He sat down in one of the chairs by the window.   
Sephiroth stirred, woken by the sound of his presence.  
  
Through the quiet of the room, Zack heard the other's slow breaths.  
"How do you feel?" he asked.   
"Much better," was the reply, sounding surprisingly genuine.   
"Good!" Zack said. There was a slight pause.  
"Thanks for coming for me today," Sephiroth said. "I wouldn't have   
managed on my own. If I had had to wait for someone else… that would have   
been humiliating."  
"Don't mention it," Zack reassured him. "It's not like I had a full schedule   
today." There was a moment's pause. Zack got to his feet. "Well, I'd   
better…,"  
"No, please… stay for a while," Sephiroth asked. "Unless you're busy, of   
course," he added. Zack shook his head and sat down again.  
"No, I don't have anything else to do, I can stay."   
  
There was a short pause, then Zack heard Sephiroth pull the covers aside.   
"Are you getting up?" he asked.  
"I need to brush my teeth, got this taste in my mouth." He heard the sound of   
bare feet crossing the floor and saw a dark form pass him. Sephiroth opened   
the bathroom door, switched on the light and closed the door behind him.   
Zack waited.   
  
When Sephiroth reentered the bedroom, he was dressed in a white bathrobe   
with the Shinra logo on the left breastpocket. He shut the light in the   
bathroom off, crossed the floor and sat down in the chair opposite Zack's,   
facing the night outside. Zack regarded him through the faint light, not   
knowing what to say, but nevertheless feeling at ease with the silence.  
  
"Some say this city has three Novembers a year because of all the rain. Too   
bad it only has one December," Sephiroth said. Zack turned and looked at   
him and smiled. They both watched the snow falling leisurely through the   
beams of sodium light.  
  
"Why haven't you gone home for New Year's?" Sephiroth asked. Zack   
shrugged.   
"There's no point in going home just for a few days," he said. "Unless I'm   
lucky to hitch a ride with a Shinra Osprey going all the way south, I'll spend   
two days on the train, then two days at home and two more to get back."  
"If you would like more days off for traveling, that could be arranged."   
"Thanks, but no, it wouldn't make much of a difference. Not many of the   
people I grew up with in Gongaga are left, it's a small place, they've moved   
to the cities to find work. I see my parents in the summer, but there is little   
reason to go back during New Year's. The friends I have are here now."   
  
Sephiroth looked at him with clear eyes, his face calm. "Besides…," Zack   
continued. "I have trouble leaving this place. When I first got here I couldn't   
imagine thinking of Midgard as home because of the air pollution and the bad   
weather, but now I'm reluctant to leave."There was a short pause, an absence   
of words which only seemed to add to the ease of the moment. Sephiroth   
smiled, his teeth white in the half darkness.  
  
"It's Midgard," he said. "It grows on you. Every time you're some place else,   
you want to go back, even though when you're here, you want to go some   
place sunny and clean." Zack laughed and nodded.  
"Yeah that's it," he said, relieved to hear someone understood. After a   
moment's thought he added: "I suppose that's what home should feel like."   
Sephiroth made a little smile and expressed his consent with a nod.   
  
Zack smiled, no longer regretting his decision of staying in Midgard over the   
holiday. He sat easy in the chair and gazed out of the window and the golden   
snow, feeling the light of thousands of stars shining overhead.  
  
  
  
  



End file.
